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While the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case afirmed that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for private use (and was the first Supreme Court case in US history to directly address whether the right to keep and bear arms is a right of individuals or a collective right that applies only to state-regulated militias), there was still one nagging loophole left: does it just apply Federally (because DC is a Federal jurisdiction), or does it apply to the states as well? Gun grabbers, naturally, were frantically insisting that this was just some weird, quirky Federal law thing that only bound the Federal government, and that states where they held influence were still free to bugger about with the rights of their citizens as they pleased. They were wrong. Again. As usual. Exactly two years and two days after the Heller decision, the US Supreme Court finally tied up that bothersome loose end after Chicago resident Otis McDonald had to drag America's new gun-grabbing capitol all the way to Washington so that SCOTUS could explain to them, likely in small words, that the Second Amendment is, in fact, incorporated per the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. In other words: "No, little gun grabbers, you don't get to just ignore the Second Amendment; any more than some states could ignore the Thirteenth Amendment (which is why the Fourteenth was passed in the first damn place - in response to the "Black Codes" that southern states had passed in the wake of the abolition of slavery in the US). The Bill of Rights applies everywhere, dickwads." Get it through your thick little heads.

On this day

[more] What else happened today

2009 — The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion that the trial court's decision that the Chicago and Oak Park gun regulations pass constitutional muster. SCOTUS would disagree, exactly one year later. 2010 — In the landmark decision of the McDonald v. Chicago case, the US Supreme Court held that the right of an individual to "keep and bear arms" protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and as such, applies to the states.

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